GUEST COLUMN: America needs strong STEM workforce

Small businesses are the backbone of the United States' economy and hold the key to its recovery.

And among American small businesses, high-tech firms that engage in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math hold the most promise to jump start growth and forge a lasting, competitive rebound.

That's because while Washington focuses reflexively on imperfect indicators like the unemployment rate, the dirty little secret is that all jobs are not created equal - not by a long shot - and policymakers should stop pretending they are.

The sobering truth is that the majority of jobs we've created over the past couple of decades have been service jobs, not value-added STEM jobs like engineers, computer programmers and medical researchers. Certainly any job is better than no job for an unemployed worker looking to support a family, but a STEM job is also better than a non-STEM job for the worker, the economy overall and our swollen budget deficit.

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STEM small businesses are highly innovative and STEM workers make significantly more in wages than non-STEM workers.

According to the nonprofit Change the Equation, STEM workers with less than a bachelor's degree earn 32 percent more than their non-STEM peers and those with a bachelor's degree earn 23 percent more.

What's more is that these high-paying, solidly middle class jobs that create taxpayers are widely available.

In the overall U.S. economy there are 3.6 applicants for each job opening, but for STEM occupations there almost two vacant jobs for each STEM job-seeker.

If small businesses in technology-dependent industries cannot find qualified applicants for these critical positions, then they cannot grow or adequately compete in the global marketplace. That is why the Small Business Subcommittee on Contracting and Workforce will hold a hearing on Thursday to investigate why small businesses are having such difficulty filling lucrative job openings and examine possible solutions.

We'll hear directly from small business operators from upstate New York to Nevada about the challenges they face finding workers with the proper qualifications to do the jobs they're offering.

What we know is that we face a short- and long-term gap between STEM job openings and qualified applicants.

Over the long term, we can and must place a national priority on educating American students in these high-tech fields that will dominate the 21st century economy and support workforce development initiatives to maintain a strong STEM labor pool.

But because creating a sufficiently deep and broad pipeline of domestic STEM teachers, students and workers will take many years, we also need to consider reforming our immigration laws now to allow more foreign STEM workers to fill immediate job openings.

Far from taking net jobs from U.S. citizens, allowing foreign workers to join or create businesses right here will inevitably lead to innovation and invention that in turn creates more American jobs, American paychecks and American taxpayers.

There are many worthy policy proposals to consider that could help achieve this desirable end.

Whether it be an increased H-1B visa cap, an automatic visa for foreign students that graduate from a U.S. college with an advanced STEM degree, or another system altogether, if Congress undertakes immigration reform without permitting small businesses to access the qualified STEM workers they are clamoring for now we will be missing an opportunity to revitalize our economy.

If you talk for any length of time with a member of Congress or their constituents, you'll find an American immigrant story. Allowing small businesses to fill STEM job openings with foreign workers in the short-term will help those businesses grow, aid our economic recovery and make America more competitive globally.

A serious, long-term focus on STEM education and workforce training here at home alongside a more practical high-skilled immigration policy are key solutions to a challenge that Congress should pursue in an urgent and bipartisan manner.

U.S. Rep. Richard Hanna, R-N.Y., is chairman of the House Small Business Subcommittee on Contracting and the Workforce. This piece first appeared on Politico.com.